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These comments focus on some issues raised in the papers by Dimand, Peart and Levy, Cot, and Leonard. These papers are fascinating, but not without weaknesses. It is argued that Dimand's presentation of what he calls the “general principle” of classical economics is misconceived. There is a confusion in this paper between the classical view of equal capacity and the much newer concept of equally rational actual performance. Peart and Levy discuss the idea of unequal capacity for pleasure in Edgeworth, but do not draw a link back to the idea in J. S. Mill of different qualities of pleasure. Cot and Leonard provide informative accounts of the American eugenic movement and its links to progressivism, but with an insufficient degree of distinction between the various positions and agendas that were concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editors of the journal "Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics" call for papers for a special issue on the topic 'Innovations in the public, co-operative and social economy.' The texts should integrate a theoretical argumentation and empirical data in a qualitative or quantitative analysis perspective. They must make a significant original contribution on the subject of social innovation. Texts may be in English or French, with a maximum of 20 pages.

This paper outlines why a move towards a complex adaptive systems model of behaviour is required if the goal is to generate better understanding of how individuals and groups interact with their environment in a disaster setting. To accomplish this objective, a bridge must be built between the broader social sciences and behavioural economics to incorporate discipline‐specific insights that are needed to move towards complexity. This is only possible through a deeper understanding of behaviour and how the environment in which they occur can influence actions. It is then that one can counteract the poor behavioural predictions, flawed policies based on myth, inefficient design, and suboptimal outcomes that have flourished in the absence of a complex adaptive systems model. This paper provides a conceptual framework that draws on concepts from across the natural and social sciences, such as behavioural economics, endocrinology, psychology, sociobiology, and sociology in order to build an interactive theory of disaster behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bourdieu is an important thinker within the sociological tradition and has a philosophically sophisticated approach to theoretical knowledge and research practice. In this paper, we examine the implication of his work for nursing and the health sciences more broadly. We argue that his work is best described as a reflexive realist who provides a space for a nonpositivist approach to knowledge that does not fall into the trap of idealism or relativism. We emphasize that Bourdieu was not an abstract theorist, but only utilized theories to understand and explain the social world in all its empirical complexity. Theory is emphasized over method without denying the importance of method. We then provide a brief overview of some of his key concepts: habitus, field and capital. His work is a scientifically astute practice that has an emancipatory purpose, with particular resonance to the problems of nursing as a social practice. Some have criticized Bourdieu for undermining agency and we briefly address this issue, but argue that his conceptual framework helps us to understand what endures in social practice and why change is often problematic. In short, this paper argues that Bourdieu's work is a fruitful resource for critiquing existing nursing approaches that are preoccupied with agency over structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Risk shapes, and is shaped by, migration: although widely acknowledged, this is unevenly, and mostly only implicitly, theorised and analysed. Starting from the distinction between risk and uncertainty, the paper contrasts the different approaches of economics and sociology to theorising risk, in terms of scale, social constructionism, and being informed by risk as opposed to being at risk. It reviews the extent to which six theoretical approaches have been, and could be, applied to migration, risk, and uncertainty: human capital, risk tolerance, new economics of migration, risk and culture, risk society, and governmentality. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ludwig von Mises is often regarded as a “champion” of laissez faire. This characterization seems to contradict Mises's clear statement that economics is value free. The aim of this paper is to resolve this apparent contradiction. We accomplish this by distinguishing, as Mises did, between the advocacy of specific laissez-faire policies and the advocacy of a laissez-faire ideology vis-à-vis the alternative ideologies of socialism and interventionism. Mises argued that the logic of a value-free economics could be used to show that socialist and interventionist policies would not achieve a goal that the socialists and interventionists implicitly or explicitly aim to achieve, that of progress in terms of material wealth for the members of society. Thus, Mises resolved the contradiction by shifting the debate from the welfare analysis of particular policies to a logical analysis of the ends of a particular ideology and the means available to achieve those ends. In a seminal paper in neo-Austrian economics, Murray Rothbard criticized Mises. We analyze Rothbard's argument partly as a means of elucidating Mises's views and argue that Rothbard misinterpreted Mises and quoted him out of context. Rothbard failed to adequately support his claim that Mises held the beliefs that Rothbard attributed to him. Moreover, Rothbard's paper undermined the value freedom that Mises regarded as a crucial characteristic of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a considerable rise in discourses concerning trust from a range of academic disciplines and perspectives. Unfortunately, many of these literatures have talked past, rather than to, each other. This paper develops an analysis of trust in economic activity through a dialogue between the disciplines of economics and sociology. It outlines the relationship of trust to economic co-operation and identifies a number of types of trust. The potential benefits of these different types of trust to advanced capitalist economies are identified. Consideration is given to the processes of trust creation and destruction in market economies. Particular emphasis here is on how far trust can be symbiotic with, or contradictory to, power and the market. With an analysis of the key properties of individual agents which make them more or less prone to trusting behaviour, the paper is then able to identify the critical factors likely to underlie high-trust and low-trust economies. This has important public policy implications given the potential benefits which trust can have for advanced economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on several abstracts on sociology. "Ontology matters: The relational materiality of nature and agro-food studies," by David Goodman examines This paper examines the question of ontological choice in agro-food studies, and emphasizes that such choices are consequential, determining analytical points of entry, arenas of theory and praxis, and normative positioning. These questions are explored by examining the privileged place of the labor process in the development of agro-food studies and, as a more specific illustration, in analyses of agro-biotechnology. It is suggested that the modernist ontological priorities embedded in the unreconstructed conceptualization of the labor process not only have been ignored but also have found an unexamined place in post-structuralist agrarian political economy. The discussion closes by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of actor-network theory as an alternative avenue of critical engagement with the new bio-politics of agro-food networks. "A matter of life and death? Men, masculinities and staying behind in rural Ireland," by Caitriona Ni Laoire is set within the context of a growing interest in the gendered nature of rurality and of rural life, and in particular in the context of an emerging literature on rural masculinities. It focuses on rural men and in particular on the phenomenon of rising male rural suicide rates.

The paper makes a case for the use of sociology of translation as a way of integrating the classical rational and stepwise view of innovation, showcasing its capacity to produce accounts of innovation that are process oriented, sensitive to contextual conditions, and attentive to its political, conflictual and institutional aspects. It does so by utilizing the approach to study the establishment and mainstreaming of cardiac telecare in northern Italy. Building on the results of a three-year longitudinal study, the paper describes the process through which this innovative approach carved a space within the existing texture of medical practices by enrolling in successive waves a range of allies and support. The detailed narration brings to the fore some crucial aspects of the local processes of negotiation and struggle and, more generally, the work and effort that goes into the making of any innovation. The paper concludes that this way of studying and narrating innovation is particularly capable of bringing back time, effort and politics into the account of the innovation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between labour market conditions and crime in Italy accounting for both age and gender in the unemployment measure and considering regional disparities between the North-Centre and the South of Italy. Using regional data over the period 1993–2002, we study the impact of wages and unemployment on different types of crime. To mitigate omitted variables bias, we control extensively for demographic and socio-economic variables. Empirical results suggest that unemployment has a large and positive effect on crime rates in southern regions. Our results are robust to model specification, endogeneity, changes in the classification of crimes, and finally, to alternative definitions of unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pro-poor growth is often advocated but seldom defined. Some proposed definitions and associated measures are reviewed in this paper. Much of this literature stresses the importance of reducing economic inequality. A basic source of confusion is whether inequality reduction is desired as a means for reducing poverty or as an end in itself. This paper argues that if it is the former, as is usually said, the pro-poor growth literature tends to overstate the importance of reducing inequality, or avoiding an increase. Growth that is most effective at reducing poverty does not necessarily coincide with growth that reduces inequality. This literature is overly pre-occupied with statistical evaluation of the outcomes of economic events, based on changes in the distribution of household incomes or expenditures. What is most needed is solidly based empirical research on the manner and extent to which alternative growth strategies influence the rate of poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Weber's outline and research program is only of limited relevance for present-day economic sociology and heterodox economics because Weber had a rather narrow and static understanding of rationality and the economy. Uncertainty, both as a basic fact of economic life and in the interpretation of what rational action means in specific contexts, is missing in his approach. After a short discussion of the secondary literature on Weber's methodology, the paper focuses on the most important writings of Weber on methods and economics (e.g., his outline and some parts of Economy and Society). The result of our investigation is that Weber shared a rather narrow, neoclassical understanding of the Austrian variant of economics. His important construction of goal-oriented behavior as the major methodological advice to analyze human action presupposes the idealized assumptions of perfect knowledge. His understanding of the market exchange process, price setting, and the functioning of full competition are rather conventional and elementary. Weber's genius did not materialize in the field of economics, but in his sociology of religion and law and in his sociology of domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the economic convergence of the European Union in terms of the effects of European Monetary Union (EMU), which began in 1999 and possible conflict with, ‘social mobility’ in Europe. Our focus is on the low rate of mobility in the labour market. We assume that this is due to psychological and social aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'new rural sociology' arguably represented the most significant watershed in the development of rural sociology during the 1970s and 1980s. I argue, however, that the new rural sociology, especially its dominant traditions of Chayanovian and neo-Leninist Marxism, has now been almost entirely superseded as a theoretical position in agrarian political economy by the international food regimes, commodity chains/systems analysis, regulationist, and actor-network traditions. In addition, Wageningen School research on `farming styles' and the 'cultural-turn' within rural sociology and rural studies have arisen, in part, as challenges to the more structuralist styles of reasoning within agrarian political economy. Parallel trends in the sociology of development are also discussed. The paper concludes with an appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of these new late twentieth century traditions in agrarian political economy, particularly in comparison with the new rural sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author replies to a critique of his work by scholar Ulrich Beck on the concept of risk society, particularly the importance of the use of social class in the development of a critical theory of risk society. The article responds to distinctions made by Beck concerning risk society including risk and catastrophe, individual and systemic risks, and the concept of conflict logic of social classes and global risks. The article also examines economic inequality, wealth distribution, and political and economic power.

This article extends the authors' earlier work (Young & Muller 2013) exploring the concept of 'powerful knowledge'. It first examines some of the origins of the concept and goes on to a brief consideration of how sociology, political theory and economics have traditionally represented 'power' and 'knowledge'. Two key senses of power are identified and two difficulties are next identified: how to retain both senses of power in a satisfactory account of 'powerful knowledge; and how to provide a satisfactory account of the 'power' of knowledge in the humanities. By identifying three meanings of 'powerful knowledge', and making an argument for their interrelationship, the article aims to put the concept on a firmer footing and point to its potential implications for curriculum theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lack of consensus in the literature, spanning multiple fields, on what exactly a norm is and furthermore on the characteristics differentiating types of norms. This paper provides definitions and a simple typology of norms with a focus on useful, objective distinctions. It is hoped that such a typology will add to the scientific rigor of communication, modeling, and clarity of thought on norms within economics and possibly other disciplines. The viability of 'more complete' typologies, which often suffer from a lack of clear criteria for differentiating types of norms, is questioned. Two main properties of a norm are emphasized: (1) whether or not the behavior is simply what is done or whether it is what one should do, and (2) the source of sanctions for violating a norm, whether oneself, others, both or neither. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how business organizations, civil society organizations and government agencies can engage one another for ‘boundary-spanning’ dialogue and develop mutually beneficial ‘working partnerships’ in resolving the challenges of sustainable development. Over the past decade the concept of sustainable development has expanded to include the simultaneous consideration of economic growth, environmental protection and social equity in business and decision making. An increasing number of businesses have responded by engaging in corporate citizenship programmes to promote sustainable development. Strategic partnerships between civil society organizations and businesses are widely promoted as important new strategies, which will bring significant sustainable development benefits especially to developing countries. This interaction arises from an understanding of the need for comprehensive and integrated approaches to business, environmental and social issues that involve increasingly broader participation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transition from cardinal to ordinal utility. We begin with the egalitarian utilitarianism of J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer, in which everyone was supposed to count as one. That is their phrase to explain how the happiness of existing people was to be maximized. We compare Spencer's goal with Darwin's goal of the “general good,” in which the number of perfect people was to be maximized. Spencer's goal was egalitarian, while Darwin's entailed biological perfection or hierarchy. We consider Edgeworth's hedonic calculus, in which the notion of hierarchy enters economics. For Edgeworth, agents have differential capacities for happiness. Throughout, we consider normative aspects of Darwin's work, in particular Darwin's challenge to the early utilitarianism of Mill and Spencer. We suggest that the Paretian principle returns utilitarianism to its egalitarian roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One objective of regulatory investigations of possible improprieties by publicly traded corporations and the imposition of sanctions if malfeasance is found is to deter other corporations from engaging in such behavior. Although the magnitude of the deterrent effect is an empirical issue, this paper provides an a priori analysis as to why the deterrent effect will be blunted in many cases, why its strength will not be uniform over time, and why, based in part on prospect theory, the deterrent effect will be weaker for ongoing questionable practices than for practices in their formative stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fisher's virulent positions on such themes as “race degeneration”, the necessity of sterilization measures for certain categories of the American population, and his urgent call for the control of the genetic quality of new immigrants are hardly consistent with the opalescent subtlety of academic disputes over the nature of capital and interest. Although Fisher repeats it often: in his work, this question of the nature of capital and interest is directly linked to eugenic assumptions and analysis. This second body of Fisherian work illuminates the strong epistemological and theoretical references in Fisher's work as an economist. This paper addresses this question through three major themes: the constant denunciation of a «racial decay» of the American population and its corollary: the project of setting up a «scientific humaniculture»; the plea against the eugenic effects of World War I, and the then haunting question of the closing of the «Golden Door». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In these comments, Professor Smith discusses the preceding group of symposium papers and reminds us that eugenic ideas are still part of the society in which we live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of the conceptualization of social structure and its relationship to human agency in economic sociology. The background is provided by John Maynard Keynes's writings on uncertainty and conventional behavior on the stock market, and the analysis consists of a comparison of the social ontologies of the French Intersubjectivist School and the Economics as Social Theory Project in the light of these observations. The theoretical argument is illustrated with concrete examples from a prominent study of the stock market boom of the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the present state of applied economics and the difficulties of integrating its findings and insights with those of other social sciences. The philosophical basis of social science is re-considered as a route to resolving these difficulties. Without a more integrated narrative about how our social systems work, applied economics, and all applied social sciences, run the substantial risk of being considered part of the world's problems, rather than offering serious routes to their solution. Some possible strands of a more coherent and integrated framework are outlined, which indicate some potentially fruitful avenues for further development. The paper concludes with illustrations of this outline for the food chain and land use agenda of the Research Councils' Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent criminological research has produced inconsistent findings in its attempts to establish a statistical relationship between economic marginalization and the spatial distribution of crime rates. This paper contends that this inconsistency is partly attributable to the way in which economic marginalization has been conceptually defined and measured. By focusing strictly on unemployment and poverty as the processes that produce economic marginalization, researchers have ignored other important economic dynamics that can marginalize workers and provide an environment conducive to crime. Further, commonly used indicators of economic marginalization, such as the unemployment rate and poverty rate, fail to measure the full range of dynamics that produce marginalization. It is our contention that employment volatility represents an important source of economic marginalization that can help foster higher levels of criminal activity. This hypothesis is tested using regression procedures to analyze the effects of employment volatility measures and frequently identified structural correlates of crime on change in the rate of property crime offenses across 683 U.S. metropolitan counties during the 1980–1983 period. The findings suggest that high levels of employment volatility are conducive to the maintenance of higher levels of property crime in general, as well as less severe forms of property crime such as larceny, when such crimes are examined on an individual basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes issue with Stehr and Grundmann's argument in this journal that sociology's poor record of contribution to practical knowledge results from sociologists' misguided attachment to the idea that social phenomena are peculiarly complex, and so peculiarly resistant to efforts at practical knowledge formation. Stehr and Grundmann develop their thesis by contrasting sociology to economics, claiming the latter's superior methods and disciplinary cultures enable it to contribute more successfully to solving practical problems. We argue that Stehr and Grundmann's comparison of the relative success of economics and sociology as policy sciences underestimates the extent to which the complexity argument has been destructive of economics' capacity to contribute practical knowledge, and overestimates the importance of disciplinary methods and cultures in explaining the use of economics in policy making. Further, we argue that the 'complexity argument' can contribute to better policy making, by virtue of its capacity to highlight the dangers of simplistic or fundamentalist solutions to social problems with complex causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assertion about the unique 'complexity' or the peculiarly intricate character of social phenomena has, at least within sociology, a long, venerable and virtually uncontested tradition. At the turn of the last century, classical social theorists, for example, Georg Simmel and Emile Durkheim, made prominent and repeated reference to this attribute of the subject matter of sociology and the degree to which it complicates, even inhibits the development and application of social scientific knowledge. Our paper explores the origins, the basis and the consequences of this assertion and asks in particular whether the classic complexity assertion still deserves to be invoked in analyses that ask about the production and the utilization of social scientific knowledge in modern society. We present John Maynard Keynes' economic theory and its practical applications as an illustration. We conclude that the practical value of social scientific knowledge is not dependent on a faithful, in the sense of complete, representation of social reality. Instead, social scientific knowledge that wants to optimize its practicality has to attend and attach itself to elements of social situations that can be altered or are actionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. The notion social class attains a well-defined theoretical content in the works of the classical political economists, who defined classes on the basis of the specific income form that each category of people (class) obtains. This approach to class constitutes a first form of a "friendly merger" between political economy and sociology. When combined with the classical labor value theory, it has led to a theory of class exploitation of the laboring class by the capitalist class. As economic theory became increasingly apologetic after the "Marginalist Revolution" (setting itself the aim of justifying capitalism), the theory of class has been totally banished from the corpus of "modern (neoclassical) economic science." This paper claims that the scientific elements inherent in classical political economy's class theory were preserved by the Marxist class theory, which further revolutionized the classical approach, creating a new, purely non-economistic and non-mechanistic "relationist" class theory, and forming thus a vivid economic-sociological approach to social classes. On the basis of the Marxist approach, complex problems concerning the class structure of contemporary societies can be tackled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about one recent argument for the development of a sociology of consumption, that of sociologist Peter Saunders. The paper falls into four parts, a discussion of the origins of the call for a sociology of consumption; a critical exposition of Saunders' own formulation of such a sociology; some more fundamental critical observations, generic to a sociology of consumption; and finally some constructive suggestions for an alternative approach to the same issues-a sociology of service provision. The putative sociology of consumption has two aspects which, though in principle touching upon the same key sociological issues actually address quite different subject matters in isolation from one another. The first has a pedigree in the sociological tradition. It is a heterogeneous tradition, sometimes concerned with consumption as an element of social differentiation, sometimes with consumerism as a shared, common culture, as in the concept of the consumer society. The second aspect is of more recent vintage deriving from the rather arcane debate about the proper subject matter of urban sociology.

The article presents an annotated selection of materials from the United Nations system. One of them is "Guidelines on Population Related Factors for Development Planners," that came up in May 1976. The guidelines drawn up, after consideration of the Report of the United Nations World Population Conference, 1974 focus mainly on the identification of demographic variables interacting with development factors, discussion of the interrelationships involved, suggestions for relating demographic factors to policy issues in planning and areas for further research. Another paper is "Recommendations for National Action: Habitat, UN Conference on Human Settlements," deals with environment. The structure of this paper which was to serve as a basis for discussion at the conference followed the six main subject areas of the provisional agenda: settlement policies and strategies; settlement planning; shelter, infrastructure and services; land, public participation; institutions and management.

The authors comment on the article "The Concept of Medicalisation Reassessed," by J. Busfield which appeared in a previous issue. They talk about the contribution of the article to medical sociology, the failure of Busfield to elaborate or articulate upon the different dimensions and directions of medicalization, and issues concerning the merits of pharmaceuticalization.

This article provides information about the invitation made by the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology," for articles from economists and sociologists on Talcott Parsons's contribution to a dialogue between economics and sociology, the economic ideas discussed in his works, and the potential of his theories for illuminating a multitude of issues located on the border between the two disciplines. More than 20 years after his death, Talcott Parsons is still regarded as the most influential American sociologist. So broad was the scope of his theoretical inquiry, it transcended sociology and crossed into fields of other social sciences, of which economics played a particularly important role in Parsons's intellectual career. It would not be an exaggeration to say that building a bridge between economics and sociology was one of the major goals of Parsons's intellectual life. Authors interested in participating should submit a 600-word abstract to the journal editor, Professor Laurence S. Moss. The deadline for the submission of the abstract is November 30, 2004. The proposed final version of the paper will be due on February 1, 2005.

This article provides a short note on the research work and academic life of the late Professor J.C. West as an introduction to a reprint of his Presidential Address as President of the IEE in 1984. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently formed French School of the “économie des conventions” have claimed that they are developing a revolutionary new approach to the social sciences. This group of researchers in economics, philosophy, sociology, law and history attempt to transcend the inherited analytical frameworks of structural-functionalist sociology and neoclassical economics and provide an alternative picture of the social world. This article will investigate some of these claims in detail. First, I trace the cohesion of the Convention School's ideas around the key concept of convention. Conventionalist theory reflects an ontological shift towards the recognition of intersubjectivity. This shift leads to tension between the advocacy of methodological individualism on the one hand and the use of convention as a central analytical category on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological understanding of generations can be enhanced by avoiding defining them rigidly as chronological cohorts but rather linking people's accounts of their generational experience with an historically informed political economy. It then becomes possible, for example, to understand the complexity of generational politics. This paper uses data on the ‘War Generation’ taken from the Exeter Politics of Old Age project to link an empirically based political economy of generational inequality with a cultural sociology of generations. The ‘War Generation’ recognizes itself and is referred to by others in terms of a common identity. It is also an historical generation; its values, attitudes and, above all, sense of national solidarity and mutual obligation were forged in the direct experience of war. But it is also divided by divergent economic interests in property and pension rights based on the historical experience of the life course by successive groups and this segmentation can be observed in political action. The political culture of the War Generation manifests both continuity and change. Understanding these dynamics requires listening to people constructing their worlds, understanding their full range of historical experiences, and analysing the conditions for their conflicts and their cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published QUARTERLY in the interest of constructive synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the F rancis N eilson Fund and the R obert S chalkenbach F oundation. Founded in 1941 Volume 64 July, 2005 Number 3 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This section profiles several contributors to the April 2004 issue of the American Journal of Economics & Sociology. Robert V. Andelson is professor emeritus of philosophy, Auburn University, and distinguished research fellow, American Institute for Economic Research. He is past president of the International Union for Land-Value Taxation and Free Trade, and of the Alabama Philosophical Society, and serves on the boards of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation and the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Early in his career, he spent three years as executive director of the Henry George School of Social Science, San Diego. George Babilot, professor emeritus of economics, San Diego State University, was director of the Center for Public Economics at that institution. He is author of monographs, essays, and articles on taxation, public finance, and welfare economics. He serves on the board of directors of the Foundation for Economic Justice. James L. Busey is professor emeritus of political science at the Cragmore campus of the University of Colorado, where he served as department chairman for many years. He has many books and articles to his credit, including Latin American Political Institutions and Processes, Notes on Costa Rican Democracy, and Political Aspects of the Panama Canal.

A considerable amount has been written recently on the concept of exploitation, which has extended its meaning beyond Marx's original usage. While the concept has lost its association with the theory of surplus value and ideas about the right of workers to their product, there is still no agreement on how exploitation should be conceptualized. It is in the context of such conceptual debate that this paper brings a historical perspective by focusing on how Adam Ferguson, two and a half centuries ago, anticipated much of the modern reformulation of the concept. Methodologically, this anticipation is not shown by finding vaguely matching quotations from modern and classic works, but follows Foucault and examines the similarity in the meaning of the vocabulary in the context of the different problematics within which they occur. In this regard Ferguson's work has three characteristics which are also to be found in many modern works: exploitation is understood as economic exploitation; it is approached through the notion of human agency; and the discussion of exploitation is integrally linked to an ethical concern about its injustice. Such a historical interest is useful for a number of reasons. First, it augments the conceptual analysis which has so far dominated the debate about the term. Second, it demonstrates part of the origins of some of the modern reformulations of exploitation. Ferguson's work anticipates those writers who perceive exploitation to involve inequality of power and control in the labour process, and to involve situations where skills are not the determinant of economic reward and where workers are denuded, diminished and impoverished. In this respect Ferguson follows those modern writers who tend to merge exploitation with alienation. Finally, a discussion of these particular antecedents of the concept is useful to illustrate the distinctiveness of Ferguson's social thought and to define his major contribution to the development of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social sciences offer two distinct approaches to understanding society. One originated with the Scottish moral philosophers and shaped the discipline of economics. The other emerged from the French enlightenment and influenced the study of sociology. The two approaches are based on radically different perceptions of man and man's relation to society. This paper explores these alternative hypotheses and examines some major implications. It concludes that the hypothesis reaching back to the Scottish philosophers provides the basis for a unified approach in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce and analyze "multistage situations," which generalize "multistage games" (which, in turn, generalize "repeated games"). One reason for this generalization is to avoid the perhaps unrealistic constraint—inherent to noncooperative games—that the set of strategy tuples must be a Cartesian product of the strategy sets of the players. Another reason is that in most economic and social activities (e.g., in sequential bargaining without a rigid protocol) the "rules of the game" are rather amorphous; the procedures are rarely pinned down. Such social environments can, however, be represented as multistage situations and be effectively analyzed through the theory of social situations. The paper contributes to the theory of social situations within the framework of multistage situations (e.g., the existence of a largest conservative stable standard of behavior which yields a definition that extends "subgame perfect equilibrium paths"), and to the theory of multistage games (e.g., the existence of ε-generalized perfect equilibrium, for all ε > 0). It also provides an equivalence theorem between subgame perfection and the largest conservative stable standard of behavior for multistage games. The usefulness of our approach is further illustrated by our notion of "k-rationality" whereby (at each substitution) players look only k steps ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists and philosophers are engaged in a pro- found re-examination of the foundations of economic science. Among them the economist, Adolph Lowe, opened a new vista. First, in his Economics and Sociology: A Plea for Cooperation in the Social Sciences (1935) he argued compellingly for a unified social science. Lowe introduced there the concept of "instrumental analysis" which he greatly modified in On Economic Knowledge (1965) and applied to a major issue of contemporary economics in The Path of Economic Growth (1976). Instrumental analysis is intended to achieve a system of "political economics," a theory for deriving one or more paths-a sequence of positions-over which an initial state of an economy can be transformed into a terminal state-a goal itself stipulated by political decision. Instrumental analysis is also used to determine measures of public control to achieve the behavioral pattern suitable to set and keep the system on the goal-adequate trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Author-supplied Abstracts.)

This paper aims at analysing a case of state/economy relationships in a Western capitalist country, with reference to the particular problem of the public enterprise, and at pointing out some of the characteristics of the Italian situation. The analysis, through an examination of the Fascist period and of the events of the 1950s, tries to identify different patterns of direct state intervention in the productive sphere and to relate them to some significant changes in the class structure and in the political system of the country. The casestudy is intended as a contribution to the debate concerning the construction of a ‘theory of the state’, for which it provides some empirical material about an example of state intervention in economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we address the classical debate about the relationship between the economic and cultural aspects of social stratification, typically cast in terms of Weber's distinction between class and status. We discuss in particular Chan and Goldthorpe's influential, yet largely unchallenged, attempt to reinstate a strict version of the class‐status distinction, mounted as an attack on 'Bourdieusian' accounts. We argue that this is unconvincing in two respects: There are fundamental problems with their conceptualization of status, producing a peculiar account where one expression of status honour explains the other; in addition, their portrayal of the Bourdieusian approach as one‐dimensional is highly questionable. In contradiction of a reading of Bourdieu as discarding the class‐status distinction, we develop an alternative, neo‐Bourdieusian account that recognizes class and status as distinct aspects of stratification, thereby allowing for a subtle analysis of their empirical entwinement. The fruitfulness of this approach is demonstrated by analysing the homology between the space of lifestyles and the social space through Multiple Correspondence Analysis of unusually rich data about lifestyles. Importantly, we highlight the relative autonomy of these spaces: Although they exhibit a similar structure, they do not overlap completely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that unemployment in Europe will not be solved by conventional back-to-work policies, despite the contribution of new jobs in environmental sectors such as energy conservation. Unemployment should be recognized, on the contrary, as a signal that the market economy is ready to evolve into a mature and more complex form. This evolution would reduce and partially eliminate the separation betweenthe industrial and domestic sectors; in a radical extension of the principle of demand-side management, the domestic sector would use thesmall-scale technology and organizational solutions that have been developed by industry and apply them directly. The 'New Domestication'would reverse the decline and disintegration of the household, making the domestic sector competent in both production and distribution. This would be the turning point in economic and social evolution towards the economy which has completed its growth stage, and reached itsclimax, and it is discussed in this paper as 'The Lean Economy'. A recognition of the reality of rising unemployment, rather than the full-employment mirage, should be the frame of reference for local economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of a greater coverage of documentary sources in many languages that is greater than that of traditional bibliographic databases, Google Scholar is an ideal tool for examining the social sciences in non‐Anglophone countries. We have therefore used it to study the scholarly output and impact of three scientific disciplines, management, economics, and sociology, in Spain and France, comparing some of the results with those retrieved with Scopus. Our findings show that scientific articles are the predominant form of scholarly communication in Google Scholar for our selected fields and countries. In addition, our results indicate that in Google Scholar the vernacular languages of each country are more used than English in all cases, but economics in France. The opposite occurs in Scopus, except for the case of sociology articles in France We also show that books receive on average more citations than other published documents in Google Scholar. Finally, we demonstrate that publishing in English is associated with greater scholarly impact, except for the case of France in Google Scholar for articles in sociology and books in the three fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with psychological and economic discrimination theories, street‐level bureaucracy studies show a direct effect of citizen characteristics on officials' judgements, or show how street‐level bureaucrats employ stereotypical reasoning in making decisions. Relying on sociological double standards theory, this study hypothesizes that citizen‐clients' status characteristics influence officials' evaluations not only directly, but also indirectly and more pervasively by influencing the interpretation of other signals. By means of a policy‐capturing study among Dutch frontline tax officials, this study takes a first step in testing double standards propositions in the context of official–citizen encounters. The findings support only some hypotheses, but indicate that citizen‐clients' level of education could serve as a moderating context affecting the interpretation of cues. The article provides important theoretical and methodological guidelines for future research on stereotyping at the front line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]